The Profits of Fear

What do you get when you combine the information from this Oct. 31, 2005 CNN article:

The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the
globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the
California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy
that's now the most-sought after drug in the world.

"I don't know of any biotech company that's so politically well-connected,"
says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco
[referring to other US politicians who stand to gain by sales of Tamiflu].

these excerpts from a speech by the US president on Nov. 1, 2005, just one day after the above article:

While avian flu has not yet acquired the ability to spread easily from
human to human, there is still cause for vigilance. The virus has developed some
characteristics needed to cause a pandemic: It has demonstrated the ability to
infect human beings, and it has produced a fatal illness in humans. If the virus
were to develop the capacity for sustained human-to-human transmission, it could
spread quickly across the globe.

[In addition to funding vaccine research w]e're also increasing stockpiles
of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Antiviral drugs cannot prevent
people from contracting the flu. It can -- but they can reduce the severity of
the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick. So in addition to
vaccines, which are the foundation of our pandemic response, I am asking
Congress for a billion dollars to stockpile additional antiviral medications, so
that we have enough on hand to help treat first responders and those on the
front lines, as well as populations most at risk in the first stages of a
pandemic.

and this article from today's Tacoma News-Tribune:

Federal health officials at a meeting Friday in Tacoma downplayed the risk
bird flu poses to humans, contrasting earlier warnings from the federal
government.
“There is no evidence it will be the next pandemic,” Dr. Julie
Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
said of avian flu. There is “no evidence it is evolving in a direction that is
becoming more transmissible to people.”

But Gerberding noted that, though the disease has killed “gazillions of
birds,” it has killed about 100 people out of about 200 sickened worldwide. The
victims were in intense, daily contact with sick flocks, often sharing the same
living space. Two people have become infected from person-to-person contact.

She did not say what had changed the thinking of health care officials
about bird flu, but said that, at this point, there is “no reason to think it
ever will” pass easily between people.
Given those facts, bird flu, like
SARS, swine flu and other once widely publicized health threats, might never
become a significant human illness.

You get yet another example of the many ways that governments and industry team up to funnel wealth from the powerless masses to the powerful few. On top of the over $1 billion of taxpayer money used to by Tamiflu, there would also be a significant increase in individual sales, as people's fear is exploited to relax them into complicity in the voluntary and involuntary transfer of their money to the already wealthy.